THE FIRST INVITATION . It was Erin Mei-Ling Stuart. ‘I’m work- ing on a new project. Would you consider writing for it? Could we meet for coffee to discuss?’ Yes! An easy yes. An immediate yes. A movement of the spirit. We met at a high table in the Church Street Café. I had worked with Erin when she was dancing with Stephen Pelton Dance Theater. I had seen the work of her own company EmSpace. I was a fan. Still am. Only more so. Erin had the characters, the structure, and the music for a new piece called Whether to Weather. She had, what a playwright would call,
approach from my normal process: start with some characters, a setting, and write the play chronologi- cally from beginning to end. The first section was ‘Drought’ and I brought in five separate ‘Scenes from a Drought.’ One about their neighbors' lush yard, another with silly word play. ‘The brick doesn't go back into the bucket because the bucket goes into the bathtubshower.’ One about the focal rock in a rock garden. I thought of them as lan- guage phrases, the same way I had seen dancers make
I brought in language phrases, Wiley and Soren read them, Erin said yes, no, maybe. I’d return to my desk to rewrite/ reshape after hearing them in rehearsal, after seeing the language mov- ing. Erin thought of Whether to Weather as a play; I thought of it as dance theater. We navi- gated the space between. I brought in: ‘Raise my rain hand, swoon sun side’ and Wiley rose and swooned. I brought in an exit that was an ellipsis:
I walk when I’m stuck with a writing problem. Around the block, up to the Castro and back, to visit a friend. The problem almost always gets solved on one of these walks. The walking also prompts new work, a poem, a monologue, a new scene. Walking as a two-way street.
‘the given circumstances.’ Two gay couples. One a whirlwind romance, the other a long term relationship, unraveling. The whirlwind would be danced, the unraveling would be text and movement. So I began again. So we began. A first meeting, around Erin’s kitchen table, with Wiley Namen Straser and Soren Santos, the performers who would be unraveling. To hear some words out loud. To see what stuck. To put some language in motion. I had taken a different
phrases when generating material. Phrases to be used, or discarded. Rearranged or recomposed. It was a lib- erating way to begin, the freedom of non-attachment. We read the scenes. We talked. Erin suggested some edits (she is to this day one of the best editors of my work), then she said ‘What if we put three of them together as the first scene?’ What? Ok. Ah, yes, yes that really works. Who knew? And so I continued. So we continued.
W The horizon line of possibility, he says. He says: It's gone.
before, or had seen their work. I was a fan. Still am. Only more so. We met off and on over the course of two years. Sometimes in a living room, sometimes in a studio. Once in the ‘community room’ of The Sports Basement, which wasn’t more than a sorta small balcony. We started with a quote from V (formerly Eve Ensler) from an episode of Krista Tippet’s On Being podcast. ‘I think I'm gonna go back to capitalism because I think what is engineered is longing. It is engi- neered longing and desire in us for what can be
He says:
W exits S reaches back, but doesn't find W.
The first time we tried it in rehearsal I turned to Erin: ‘That was pretty good, huh’ ‘Yeah, but he can play the ellipsis harder.’ She was right. Wiley could. And did. I brought in: S He was an open mouth target, a... he was ... he... our ... mine. He said: Lawn gone. I watched Erin and Soren tackle each ellipsis, comma, semi-colon, period. In performance you could feel Soren find his way through those sentences. Punctua- tion is a detail, like the tilt of the head, or an arm cir- cle, a hip ajar. This in between space we were navi- gating, between a play and a dance, heightened and highlighted the language and the punctuation. Working with Erin on Whether to Weather was the first time I experienced an intersection between my plays and my poems. Between my words and punctuation and how they made bodies move.
in the future, you know.’ —V (formerly Eve Ensler)
Longing. Desire. Action. We all brought in text, we all created movement (more than slightly terrifying for me being in the room with Chris, Rowena, and Christy!) We strung material together, tried it out, then met in a circle. No one ever said, as I do with my students, circle up, we just naturally put ourselves in that configuration. ‘Joining together in this way is a symbol of unity, for a circle has no beginning or end; all the points are equally significant.’ — Anna Halprin from Planetary Dance. We’d review the string. Yes, No, Maybe. A prob- lem? challenge? bumpy spot? would appear. We circled. Christy would offer the start of an answer, I’d add another thought, then Chris, then Rowena, not always in that order, but always a turn around the circle. By the time the turn was completed (a pirouette?) we had figured out the next step forward, answered the question, or discov- ered a new question. We found a title: Dearly Gathered . Through the multi-year process Rowena kept us on track
‘A play is a poem standing up.’ —Frederico García Lorca
A SECOND INVITATION . From Rowena Richie. ‘Wanna devise a new piece with me, Christy Funsch, and Chris Black?’ An easy yes, immediate. As with Erin, three art- ists who I had known for a long time, had worked with
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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